Read In Bed with the Tudors: The Sex Lives of a Dynasty from Elizabeth of York to Elizabeth I Online
Authors: Amy Licence
Catherine’s erratic menstruation was not uncommon at the time. The regularity with which women’s commonplace books contain recipes to ‘bring on a woman’s courses’, or cure amenorrhea, suggest this must have been a common problem. It was also, probably, a euphemism for abortion, including herbs to stimulate contraction and the expulsion of blood: the herb rue, drunk in the evening, was supposed to be particularly effective, as were savin and mixtures of wine and hyssop. Shepherd’s purse, St John’s wort, Bishop’s weed and wallflower were all suggested and could be found growing wild, according to one medieval Herbarium. Some texts were explicit, stating that wallflower mixed in honey and wine, applied to the vagina ‘takes the foetus from the womb’; more euphemistically, pennyroyal could ‘bring foorth dead fruit’. A 1476 medical text included recipes for inducing menstruation with a blend of soda, figs, garlic seed, myrrh and lily ointment, or else pulped cucumber flesh mixed in milk. These could be drunk or inserted into the vagina on pessaries of soft wool.
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Others suggested dates, hazelnuts and saffron. Fine lines demarcated their administration: it was safe to drink rue in the evening but lethal in the morning. While it was illegal to induce abortion or interfere in any way with the growth or delivery of a healthy child, such remedies protected the user by expressing their dual purpose and warning against misuse. In addition, the interchangeability of treatments for amenorrhoea and abortive methods, indicate the danger many unsuspecting women were exposed to, often at the expense of their reproductive health and sometimes resulting in death. One medieval herbal stated it was written ‘so every man, woman and child’ could ‘be their own physician in times of need’; and possibly their own executioner too. Abortion could also be procured through massage and, as advised by Avicenna of Persia, by prolonged baths, drugs, fasting, intercourse and increased respiratory effort which deprived a foetus of air. One potion to abort a child included goat’s milk and gum resin, while suppositories to achieve the same effect were made up of black olive oil, larkspur, rosemary, marjoram and laurel seeds. Needless to say, all forms of abortion were considered acts of murder at the time and contrary to the law of God; if it could be proven, a woman might face the same death sentence as one who committed infanticide. In many cases it would be very difficult to prove that deliberate termination rather than miscarriage had taken place, but when courts were presented with seemingly incontrovertible evidence, they ruled harshly. In 1503, pregnant spinster Joan Wynspere of Nottinghamshire drank various poisoned and dangerous draughts which killed herself and her child, yet this did not prevent a court of finding her guilty of murder.
London records of late sixteenth-century medical practitioners cite examples of ‘wise women’ and practitioners called to account for their activities. In many cases, the boundaries between prenatal care and the procuration of abortion appear to have been broached. A midwife named Christina admitted administering dangerous combinations of rhubarb and laurel to patients in 1598 and an Anna Baker was accused by another woman of giving fumigations and purgatives in 1589. Jane Rogers of Tower Hill, a confessed midwife, was reported in 1600 for having charged 11
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to administer unction, nine potions and two purgations while Alice Minsterley was warned about her purges in 1585, 1597 and 1602, with the threat of imprisonment. In 1602, Susanna Gloriana, a French woman residing in London, was accused by a Jane Pickman of administering a successful purge of syrup of hyssop and roses to a Mary Brett, before killing her with a ‘herbal bath’. Gloriana confessed but was shown leniency for being poor, pregnant and breastfeeding a child: her husband paid £20 as a bond to ensure she would cease practice. At the same time, Rose Griffin of Fetter Lane was practising as a midwife, issuing purges and lozenges made from antimony, sarsaparilla and senna, which had weakened many women: she would confess and be imprisoned in 1607. Cecilia Poplar of Aldgate had prescribed purges and fumigation for one Dorothy Gatersby, resulting in her patient’s death: she was also known to have used this treatment on two other women, who were then still living.
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The secret, feminine nature of childbirth and reproductive health could be a double-edged sword: whilst creating authentic oral traditions of experience and wisdom, it also appeared to license quackery and bad practices, so long as they were conducted by women. By the 1550s, physicians were advocating that, after the first trimester, women should not be bled or take pills or purges without the ‘counsel of an expert’. Definitions of what constituted expertise were still likely to differ, though.
Catherine’s reduced circumstances were again causing concern in March 1505. She wrote to Henry VII complaining of the ‘misery’ in which she lived, which should ‘reflect dishonour on his character’ and explaining that she had not wasted money on luxuries, rather, that she had been forced to borrow in order to eat.
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Writing to her father in April the following year, her situation had not improved: Henry would give her no money for food, which caused her the ‘greatest anguish’ as her household were ‘ready to ask alms and herself all but naked’. Dramatically, she concluded with a plea for a Spanish confessor, as she had ‘been for six months near death’.
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That October she suffered further attacks of fever and by the spring of 1507, she was writing even more explicitly, that she was driven to sell her gold and silver as her household were ‘obliged to live in rags’. She reported to the ambassador De Puebla that she had ‘suffered martyrdom’ and begged to be released from her ‘humiliating position’ as soon as possible.
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At the same time though, her health seemed to improve a little. Continually plagued by illness since her transference from sunny Spain to England’s damp climate, her former recoveries were described more as ‘appearances than … reality’, as she had now begun to regain her ‘natural healthy colour’. However, the constant embarrassment and difficulties of her penury were weighing heavily on her spirits; these ‘moral afflictions’ were ‘beyond the reach of the physician’. She wrote again to Henry and as always, her pleas put the needs of her women first, now reduced to five in number, who had not received the smallest sum of money since their arrival in 1501.
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By 1509, a full seven years after she had been widowed, Catherine’s financial situation was still desperate. She had sold her household goods and after appealing directly again to the king, was rebuffed with a complete denial of his obligation to support her and that her current food allowance was only given as alms. Between the ages of sixteen and twenty-three, Catherine cannot have afforded to furnish her table in a way that befitted her status or facilitated her fertility. Through her most fertile years, privation, ill health and religious fasts contributed towards an erratic menstrual cycle and probably left her underweight and under nourished.
Catherine’s contemporaries may have perceived another reason for her frequent illnesses. Physicians believed sex was essential for good health and that abstinence could lead to illness and even sterility: the multitude of ailments suffered by ‘green’ maidens could only be cured by marriage, whose ‘cold, damp’ wombs craved the complimentary ‘hot, dry’ male seed. Seventeenth-century writers described symptoms ranging from hysterical fits and sores suffered by their virginal patients, to the ‘strangulation’ of the womb, which could fill the brain with a dark smoke and cause melancholy, madness and even prompt suicide.
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One writer described the descent of a bride-to-be into terrible ‘mother-fits’, five or six times a day, at the thwarting of her proposed marriage:
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as the century progressed, these symptoms could prove even more dangerous when mistaken as signs of demonic possession. Herbal remedies included ingredients such as coral, aloe, myrrh, rhubarb, nutmeg, amber, cloves, cinnamon, aniseed and wormwood. Inevitably, female body shape was linked with sexual appetite: larger, ruddy women were full of moisture which dampened their lust while lean and post-menstrual women were filled with perpetual desire. However, all women were insatiable by nature, as they had been designed for breeding: it was their strength and their greatest flaw in the patriarchal world. Men could not do without them, yet denigrated and feared them for their perceived weaknesses and the temptations they offered, warning each other not to be ‘milked’ by lascivious women.
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Once again, balance was advocated. Excessive desire could corrupt women, so their lust should be controlled by hard work, religious devotion, meditation and fasting. The ideal was a modest but regular pattern of sexual relations within marriage. And for Catherine, that ideal was looking increasingly unlikely.
On the death of a prince or king, it was customary to wait several months to determine whether or not his widow was pregnant, with the resulting implications for the line of succession. In 1502, Henry VII had delayed appointing his second son as Prince of Wales, possibly to safeguard against the possibility that Catherine might be carrying an heir to Arthur’s title. Again, Catherine had experience of such a situation, as her brother’s widow was found to have conceived shortly before his death, as would her sister Juana, married to Philip the Handsome. However, such hopes would imply that consummation had taken place, so if Catherine’s later assertions of virginity are to be believed, she must have known there was little chance of any pregnancy. In the meantime, her parents wrote urging the formalisation of her betrothal to the young Prince Henry, then a boy of eleven. That June, Ferdinand, Isabella and Henry VII pledged to do their utmost to achieve a papal dispensation for the match, which was necessary as the couple were related in the first degree of affinity and Catherine’s marriage to Arthur was ‘solemnised according to the rites of the Catholic Church, and afterwards consummated’.
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This appears to belie the letter sent to Spain by Catherine’s chief gentlewoman Dona Elvira, who wrote of the bride’s quiet disappointment and her continued virginal state, yet to smooth the way for a new union of such familial proximity, a thorough dispensation was needed to cover every eventuality. Isabella followed this with a statement clarifying her belief: ‘although they were wedded, Prince Arthur and the Princess Katharine never consummated the marriage. It is well known in England that the Princess is still a virgin … but … it has seemed to be more prudent to provide for the case as though the marriage had been consummated’.
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That December, Pope Julius II issued a dispensation for the marriage to go ahead, even in the case of consummation. Finally, it looked as if the young widow’s future was in hand. A treaty was signed asserting that the wedding would go ahead once the prince had come of age. However, those arranging the match had failed to take account of one important factor: the bridegroom.
In June 1505, the fourteen-year-old Prince Henry made a declaration before the Bishop of Winchester, repudiating the betrothal. Explaining that he had been contracted in marriage ‘during his minority’, he now asserted himself, as being ‘near the age of puberty’, to denounce the match as ‘null and void’. Whether this was an act of personal defiance or part of his father’s attempts to secure an alternative foreign match or attain the long-awaited dowry, is unsure; certainly it coincided with the one of the princess’s worst periods of privation and illness. For Catherine, her future was cast into doubt again, as she approached her twentieth birthday without any indication of soon becoming the queen, wife and mother she had been raised to expect. Delay and uncertainty shadowed the following years. The death of her mother Isabella in 1504 and her father’s remarriage and fathering of a son, in addition to further wrangling about her dowry and the complications arising from her sister’s widowhood, drew the process out further. In March 1507, Ferdinand wrote in sympathy with her ‘miserable and trying life’, although his tone very quickly changed after encouragement from Henry VII and his next letter spoke of the anticipated happiness of the union; that ‘ere long, she would be comfortable with her husband in her house’. Further negotiations regarding the payment of her dowry proved inconclusive; her sister Juana was unable to release the necessary money and Ferdinand continued to propose that Catherine return home if Henry found their current terms unsatisfactory. Through 1508, the marriage was again being discussed as a certainty, yet Henry was still delaying in order to consider a marriage for his son to Eleanor of Austria. Time, however, was not on his side. The following February, ill health meant he was unable to complete his habitual journey to commemorate his wife at Westminster although he did give alms to a woman who lay in child bed, on the sixth anniversary of Elizabeth’s death. At the end of February, aware of his deteriorating condition, he retired to Richmond Palace and shut himself away in his private chambers. Few people were allowed access and he died that April, possibly of tuberculosis. When the news reached Catherine, she must have been exhilarated and terrified at the possibilities the next reign might offer her.
Less than three months later, the pauper princess was a married woman, heading to her coronation. The wheel of fortune had carried her from the penury and dependence of her widowhood, up to the centre of the dazzling new court and the role she had been born to fulfil. Now, eight years after arriving in the country, its crown would finally be placed upon her head. That Saturday in late June was bright and clear: all London turned out to see the procession and pageantry of their new king and queen, dazzled by the display of precious gems and magnificent fabrics, as well as the youth and beauty of their new rulers. The colouring of Catherine’s train emphasised her newly-reinstated regality and purity. She wore white embroidered satin and her long auburn hair fell loose to her waist from beneath the coronet set with oriental stones. Two white palfreys dressed in white cloth-of-gold bore the covered litter, in which she sat, through the London streets hung with tapestries and cloth-of-gold, from the Tower to Westminster Palace. Her retinue rode similar beasts, attired in gold, cloth of silver, tinsel and velvet; scarlet and red cloth, silk, green and white cloth and other clothing ‘necessaries’ to equip 160 of the king’s officials alone had cost over £4,700. The loyal waiting women, who had served the princess through her years of penury, rode in a splendid chariot and wore the regal cloth-of-gold, anticipating the feasting and jousting that would fill the long hours of the midsummer night. Ahead of Catherine rode her husband of two weeks, her former brother-in-law, Henry VIII. The ten-year-old boy who had given her away in marriage to Arthur had grown into an impressive young man. Tall, strong and handsome, he was only days short of his eighteenth birthday and the chroniclers vied to outdo each other in the expression of his qualities. The 6-foot 2-inch king had inherited the auburn colouring of his Plantagenet forebears; he was clean shaven and wore his hair cut short and straight in the French style. Thomas More described the ‘fiery power’ of his eyes and ‘twin roses’ of his cheeks.
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For their journey, he wore a cloak of crimson velvet, furred with ermine, a jacket of raised gold, embroidered with diamonds, rubies, emerald, pearls and other rich stones. His horse was dressed in damask gold and all the gentlemen of his retinue wore scarlet or crimson velvet. The following day, they were crowned together in Westminster Abbey and the last of Catherine’s long-cherished ambitions came true. It seemed that fortune had finally rewarded her patience.